Would he actually leave West Ham for it? He is a player who is probably past the level of college soccer.
Yep, you're correct. And Max Goeggel to Harvard. I didn't list them because I'm not sure they'll leave Europe, but we'll see. One more '03 commitment I forgot to list was Eliot Jones to Stanford.
Damen Marcu, a '99 who signed an — I believe — pro contract with Colorado Springs in 2017 and made a few appearances is now at Barton CC in Central Kansas. I'm pretty it was a pro deal. I guess whatever it was didn't affect eligibility rules for JuCo ball, which may be different than NCAA D1.
Not a huge surprise, but it looks like Milan Iloski's monster season for UCLA is getting him a ticket to MLS. Looks like Milan Iloski is skipping his senior season with UCLA - been told he is signing a Homegrown contract with Real Salt Lake. Iloski was terrific for the Bruins in 2019. https://t.co/jyX7VOvSG2— J.R. Eskilson (@JREskilson) January 13, 2020
Two FCD related bits for today. Nothan Toledo of the FCD academy had verbally committed to Colombia. He took an extra gap year to play with the U19s last season, and it paid off. He's now going to Syracuse instead. I think he's a little bit under-rated due to the level of talent around him at the FCD academy. Goes a tad bit under the radar. ICYMI: We've added four newcomers to our roster this spring. Welcome to the 🍊 family! #DaretoDreamDetails: https://t.co/hSENA78Qav pic.twitter.com/aiHkID8qhY— Syracuse Men's Soccer (@CuseMSOC) January 15, 2020 The FCD twitterati have been analyzing the relationship between FCD and SMU the last couple of days. Two more SMU players were just signed by FCD (Munjoma to the first team; Ponder to NTSC). That makes 20 SMU players that FCD has signed to a contract. Is there a closer connection between MLS Club and NCAA team in the country? UCLA and the Galaxy maybe? The highest profile SMU products to sign with FCD have been Paul Broome, Ugo Ihemelu, Daniel Hernandez, and Ramon Nunez. But that's not all. The FCD owners, Dan and Clark Hunt, both went to SMU. As did their father and club saviour, Lamar Hunt. Their head coach, Luchi Gonzalez, went to SMU. At SMU Luchi played for who? He played for eventual FCD coach Schellas Hyndman. The connections go on. Prompted by a tweet from SMU's @SMUCoachHUDDY, I dug deep and found a whole bunch of @SMUSoccerM to #FCDallas connections.Twenty players – the SMU to FC Dallas connection https://t.co/FHtCvjVWJW #DTID— 3rd Degree (@3rdDegreeNet) January 16, 2020
Toledo has been one of my favorite CB prospects ever since I saw him straight up bully Gio Reyna a few years ago. Gio's only real contribution he had was a goal from a free kick and outside of that Toledo completely eliminated him from the game. Gio was so frustrated that he tried to cheap shot Toledo with his studs up quite a few times. Toledo should have been signed and gotten more chances at NTFC.
I personally would rather see a kid like Nathan Toledo be a starter at a good NCAA team like Syracuse than be a bench player for NTSC. Hedges, Ziegler, and Bressan will get the first team minutes. Callum Montgomery will probably debut with the first team this season, and will play a lot for NTSC. Brecc Evans is still with NTSC. FCD just used its first round draft pick on a CB (Nkosi Burgess). He'll be on a first team deal, but will probably play for NTSC. They just signed Philip Ponder to an NTSC deal. So if Nathan Toledo signed with the organization.....................when would he play? I don't know. If NTSC needs to fill a CB gap, then they can bring up the next academy kid on the assembly line. Carrera until he heads to Louisville maybe. Other players still on the assembly line include Brandon Terwege at SMU, Mark Salas at UNC, and others. This is after the best CB in the hopper, Chris Richards, was sold to Bayern Munich.
I’ve liked Toledo’s game for years, but I haven’t heard good things about his development and I can see some of it in the games I’ve seen of him recently. My opinion on Toledo has definitely come down considerably in the last year.
UCLA-to-LA Galaxy is indeed strong. I have it at 28, not counting Sigi and current Los Dos coach Junior Gonzalez. Sean Alvarado, Chad Barrett, Paul Caligiuri, Michael Enfield, Adam Frye, Seth George, Leonard Griffin, Kevin Hartman, Frankie Hejduk, Jose Hernandez (II), Chandler Hoffman, Zak Ibsen, Brian Iloski (II), Cobi Jones, Eddie Lewis, Kyle Nakazawa, Brian Perk, Ante Razov, Matt Reis, Brian Rowe, Jorge Salcedo, Nathan Smith, Michael Stephens, McKinley Tennyson, Scot Thompson, Pete Vagenas, Greg Vanney, Sacho Victorine, I have UVa-to-DCU/Loudoun at 25, not counting Bruce Arena and Bob Bradley, who DNP at Virginia but did coach there. Jeff Agoos, Chris Albright, Kenny Arena, Brian Bates, Calle Brown (Loudoun), Jeff Causey, Ben Crawley, Adam Cristman, Alecko Eskandarian, George Gelnovatch, John Harkes, Mike Huwiler, Erik Imler, Kris Kelderman, John Maessner, Jason Moore, Dane Murphy, Ben Olsen, Curt Onalfo, Clint Peay, Mike Slivinski, Joe Vide, Richie Williams, AJ Wood, Lyle Yorks, (Basically, if you played in Charlottesville in the early 90s, odds are you eventually cycled through DC.) Maryland to DCU is close, with 16 ex-Terps having been signed. That's not counting GM Dave Kasper, who is a Terp. Steve Armas, Marc Burch, Judah Cooks, Christiano Francois, Taylor Kemp, Stephen King, Domenic Mediate, Patrick Mullins, Chris Odoi-Atsem, Russell Payne, Donovan Pines, Chris Seitz, Casey Townsend, Rodney Wallace, Ethan White, Gordon Wild. The difference, of course, is that most of these players won national titles at UCLA, Virginia and Maryland and many of them went on to then win MLS Cup, often with LA Galaxy or DC United. SMU, for all that talent, has only been to the College Cup twice and never played in a final.
Some more random names not on my previous list. Players from non-DA sides noted with parentheses. Again, some of these could well change. '01 Tyger Evans: Penn State '01 Jose Ortiz (FC Dallas Premier): SMU '01 Zach Schawl: Central Arkansas '01 Sekou Soumah: South Carolina '01 Nathan Toledo: Syracuse '02 Jide Awujo (Kalonji SA, formerly Atl Utd): Villanova '02 Josiah Blanton: James Madison '02 Jamie Dunning (Sparta Rotterdam): Utah Valley '02 John Franks: Georgetown '02 Max Goeggel (VfB Stuttgart): Harvard '02 Josh Hallenberger: Clemson '02 Jordan Matthews: South Carolina '02 Diego Maynez: NIU '02 Jake O'Connor: South Carolina '02 Miguel Ramirez: Duke '02 Anthony Reaves: Cornell '02 Peter Stroud (West Ham): Duke '02 Riley Thomas: UNC '02 Tasker Wheeler: Marquette '03 Alejandro Alvarado: UNC '03 Marcus Ferkranus: Oregon State '03 Connor Gramke: Navy '03 Eliot Jones: Stanford
New stadium at SMU. A $5 million gift from Heather and Ray W. Washburne ’84 and family will create the new Washburne Soccer and Track Stadium!Learn more about the project here: https://t.co/t69WivhqQZ#PonyUp #ShapingChampions pic.twitter.com/rveG8Zxb71— SMU Men's Soccer (@SMUSoccerM) February 25, 2020
Me either. But hey, if that's the price of getting a new soccer facility built in the NCAAs................so be it.
Very interesting player listed there is Jose Ortiz 01 going to SMU. He is one of the best youth players I have seen in many years. A pure goal scorer and I think the Texas High School Gatorade player of the year for at least two years running. Saw him play with Premiere and immediately thought FCD had missed the boat on this kid. Talked to a few people and rumor was FCD wanted him in the pro set up but he resisted. He is better than Pepi right now and bigger prospect in terms of a goal scorer and no doubt could be sitting behind Ondrasek in the first team. Also heard he may be going to South America to play pro instead of SMU, but who knows. Kid has immense talent.
I’m super interested in FCD premiere kids. Have any kids gone from never rostering with FCD proper to becoming pro? There’s been a few stories of players from there that have really caught my eye. There was the CM who was going to some good D1 school and was going to play LB or something, but the coach really liked him. There was that kid with no Mexican heritage and signed with some team in Mexico, I think it was something Brooks. A few other stories that I never remembered to track.
Very few playing at an MLS level. Charlie Kelman is probably it, and as of right now he's on a club virtually guaranteed to be relegated from League One. So he's not playing at an MLS level either. I suspect he'll get a transfer in the next window to a bigger club, though. People freaked the eff out when Jamie Dunning left for Feyenoord. Right now transfermarkt lists him as having left Holland for Utah Valley University. I don't know if that's true. So perhaps the endless blathering on Big Soccer about how FCD didn't know what the hell they were doing and how dare they not give him more of an opportunity...…………….was wasted energy. Every parent thinks their child is the next Lionel Messi. But there's usually a reason professional talent evaluators think Premier kids are Premier kids. That's not to say they aren't good players. Many of them have really productive NCAA careers. And some even get drafted by organizations other than FCD. Those that go to Mexico disappear. [Heck even DA players that go to Mexico disappear. Big Mexican clubs are very challenging development environments.] I don't know that much about the player that Runhard mentioned there, so can't comment on him relative to others.
'99 6-foot-4 CB who was previously with Denver, Aston Villa, and the US U18s. Supposedly did rather well at Denver. #IUMS fans, help us welcome Callum Stretch to Bloomington! #GoIU ⚪️🔴 pic.twitter.com/qB94n6lvqf— Indiana Men's Soccer (@IndianaMSOC) March 11, 2020
Not productive times for NCAA youngsters......................... If I was a player like say Kevin Bonilla, I'd think hard about biting the bullet and going with a USL contract over the NCAA opportunity. Who knows when the NCAAs will be back in swing. I suspect these schedules will only get more and more truncated. Men's soccer D1 updateno fall seasonAMERICA EASTATLANTIC 10IVYPATRIOTno non-conferenceBIG EASTBIG TENPAC-12truncated non-conference (start of season)ACC: Sept. 1HORIZON: Oct. 1MAAC: Oct. 3NORTHEAST: Sept. 10WAC: Sept. 16WCC: Sept. 24— RPI Update (@RpiUpdate) July 17, 2020
An amateur deal of short duration makes sense for a lot of these kids ( Bailey and Josh at Solar as well). Take your shot at pro soccer to see how you do and retain your college eligibility. If wash out you can still get a full ride and college paid for. As for college soccer. I doubt any of it happens. Once a kid tests positive I could see them shutting the entire thing down. Same way I don't see college football happening. It will be interesting to see if USL can keep playing and keep positive tests low as they are not in a "bubble" like the MLS teams. MLS has done surprisingly well at keeping numbers low once they booted FCD and Nashville.
Its going to be really tough for the NCAA programs to stay open. Colleges are going to try really hard to keep the "money making" programs open as much as possible (football and basketball with their tv contracts). That's not soccer. We'll see if it leads to more kids delaying their move to the NCAAs in order to keep fit and developing. Anything is better than nothing. Even if its just training informally with an MLS club. Its possible that a kid such as Bonilla can take Portland course work on-line and then also train with FCD/USL.
You are onto something. Bonilla's best chances are for Reggie to be sold in the next 6 weeks or a different opportunity to open up say if a fullback is out with an injury. That's unlikely as all first team fullbacks are healthy and ready to play. What made it worse for Bonilla is that now that most of the first team is back in town and healthy, they will need game minutes (hello North Texas) and with shrinking game schedules...tough decision indeed.
USL Academy Gap Year is the best option for almost every NCAA prospect at this point as at best college soccer will be truncated if not out right cancelled...USL might struggle to do much this fall, but you still have all Spring/Summer of 2021.